Margot watched his face as he spoke, with a curious feeling that this was not the loved and loving uncle she had always known, but a stranger. There were wrinkles and scars she had never noticed, a bitterness that made the voice an unfamiliar one, and a weariness in the droop of the figure leaning upon the hoe which suggested an aged and heartbroken man.
Why, only yesterday, it seemed, Hugh Dutton was the very type of a stalwart woodlander, with the grace of a finished and untiring scholar, making the man unique. Now, if Adrian had done this thing, if his mere presence had so altered her beloved guardian, then let Adrian go! Her arms went round the man’s neck and her kisses showered upon his cheeks, his hands, even his bent white head.
“Uncle, uncle! Don’t look like that! Don’t. He’s gone and shall never come back. Everything’s gone, hasn’t it? Even that irreparable past, of which I’d never heard. Why, if I’d dreamed, do you suppose I’d even ever have spoken to him? No, indeed. Why, you, the tip of your smallest finger, the smallest lock of your hair, is worth more than a thousand Adrians! I was sorry he treated me so rudely, but now I’m glad, glad, glad. I wouldn’t listen to him now, not if he said good-by forever and ever. I love you, uncle, best of all the world, and you love me. Let’s be just as we were before any strangers came. Come, let’s go out on the lake.”
He smiled at her extravagance and abruptness. The times when they had gone canoeing together had been their merriest, happiest times. It seemed to her that it needed only some such outing to restore the former conditions of their life.
“Not to-day, dearest.”
“Why not? The potatoes won’t hurt, and it’s so lovely.”
“There are other matters, more important than potatoes. I have put them off too long. Now—Margot, do you love me?”
“Why—uncle?”
“Because there is somebody whom you must love even more dearly. Your father.”
“My—father! My father? Of course; though he is dead.”